


they'll call our crimes a work of art

by aghamora



Series: Flaurel Ficlets [21]
Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: 1930s, Alternate Universe - Bonnie & Clyde, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 01:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5073040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghamora/pseuds/aghamora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This isn’t the kind of place Laurel frequents.</p>
<p>If Michaela hadn’t dragged her here tonight, she never would’ve even dreamed of coming. She doesn’t break the law. Her father owns half their tiny Midwest town, and he’d kill her if she did anything to sully her family’s squeaky-clean reputation.</p>
<p>She’s a good girl, and good girls don’t go to <i>speakeasies</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they'll call our crimes a work of art

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: partners in crime.

This isn’t the kind of place Laurel frequents.

If Michaela hadn’t dragged her here tonight, she never would’ve even dreamed of coming. She doesn’t break the law. Her father owns half their tiny Midwest town, and he’d kill her if she did anything to sully her family’s squeaky-clean reputation.

She’s a good girl, and good girls don’t go to  _speakeasies_.

There’s a haze of cigarette smoke hanging in the air. Swing music is blaring, and Michaela disappeared a few minutes ago, tugged onto the dance floor by Aiden. Laurel doesn’t know anyone else here, and so she’s resigned herself to sitting at the bar alone, glancing around and trying not to look as out of place as she feels.

“You don’t come to places like this often, do you?” a voice asks, stirring her from her misery.

She turns, and finds a man sliding onto the barstool next to her. His hair is slicked back, beard neatly trimmed, grey three-piece suit immaculately pressed. He looks older than her – much older, yet she can’t help but blush for some reason when she meets his eyes.

“Is that obvious?” she squeaks, feeling stupid.

He chuckles. “Just a little. Name’s Frank.”

He speaks with an accent she’s never heard before. Clearly, he isn’t from around here.

Laurel takes his hand and shakes it hesitantly. “Laurel.”

“Can I buy you a drink, Miss Laurel?”

She bristles, taken aback by his forwardness. “I don’t drink.”

“C’mon. You can’t tell me a looker like you’s been sitting alone at a bar for this long and no one’s offered to buy you a drink yet. The men in this town.” He makes a faint ‘tsking’ sound through his teeth. “I tell you, they don’t have any taste.”

She blushes. He orders them two fingers of whiskey, making sure to tell the bartender to put a little soda in hers. She brings it to her lips and tips it back hesitantly, cringing when the fiery liquid hits her throat.

Frank laughs. “It’ll start to taste better. Trust me.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” she coughs. Then, after she settles down, Laurel asks, “So. Where’re you from?”

“Philadelphia.”

“Then what’re you doing all the way in Ohio?”

“I tend to travel a lot in my line of work.”

“And what line of work is that?”

Frank doesn’t miss a beat. “I rob banks.”

Laurel laughs. He doesn’t. When she notices that, the smile falls from her lips.

“Oh.” She gulps. “So you’re a… criminal?”

He gestures to the glass in her hand. “With all due respect, so are you tonight, sweetheart.”

Laurel has just started thinking of what to say to that when suddenly Frank reaches for his hat, downs the last of his drink, and stands.

“Unfortunately I have to be on my way,” he tells her. “But who knows? Maybe if I manage to keep myself outta the big house I’ll be lucky enough to come calling on you someday, Miss Laurel.”

He leaves her with that. Laurel watches him go, bewildered.

 

–

 

A few days later, it’s all over the papers.

The First Financial bank a few towns over was hit. The culprit? A tall, unidentified man with a beard. The tellers all reported that he’d spoken with an accent, and couldn’t have been from anywhere around here.

_Frank_.

She’s engaged to be married to Kan, the mayor’s son. Her father loves him, and so does she. She  _does_. But she can’t stop thinking about Frank. That smooth, deep voice. That dangerous glint in his eye. She’ll never see him again, most likely. It’s not like it matters.

Somehow, she can’t help but have the sneaking suspicion that it does.

 

–

 

Three months pass before their paths cross again. Summer arrives, the heat and humidity sweltering. Then, early one evening as she’s lounging in her bedroom reading a book, the maid appears in the doorway.

“Miss Laurel, you have a gentleman caller at the door.”

Laurel looks up from her book and frowns. A gentleman caller? She hasn’t had one of those in years, since before her engagement to Kan. It’s public knowledge that she’s taken, and no boy in his right mind would try to call on her now.

“Did he say his name?”

She shakes her head. “No, miss. Just that you’d want to see him.”

Bewildered, Laurel stands and descends the stairs – and the moment she steps in front of the door, she finds Frank standing there, peering out at her from underneath the brim of his hat, his hands in his pockets. He looks just as she remembers, and just how she’s pictured him all these months.

Her stomach drops, half from fear, half from… she doesn’t know what.

“Frank!” she hisses, stepping outside and closing the door behind her. “What’re you doing here?”

“Said I’d come calling on you someday,” he answers simply. “And that day happens to be today.”

“You can’t just march up to my house like… like  _this_  – and how did you even know where I live?”

“Your family owns this town. All I had to do was ask after a girl named Laurel, and everyone knew who you were.”

“You can’t do that! You can’t ask around town after me. You can’t  _call_ on me. I’m engaged, and people will start to talk, and I don’t even know you-”

“That’s why I’m here. You’re getting to know me better. I’m taking you out tonight.”

She folds her arms, raising her chin. “And what makes you think I’d say yes to going out on the town with a crook like you?”

“You will. Now c’mon. Wouldn’t want anyone to see us and ruin your squeaky-clean reputation, would we?”

Laurel hesitates, but eventually gives in and follows him out to the street, to an expensive-looking black Ford V8 parked by the side of the road.

“Is this yours?” she asks, as he opens the door for her.

“Borrowed.”

“From a friend?”

Frank grins. “Something along those lines.”

 

–

 

He takes her to the party in a barn the next town over, and talks and drinks and dances with her. There’s a spark between them, the kind of electricity she’d always dreamed she would feel with a boy; the kind she’s never had with Kan, no matter how hard she’s tried.

After the party, he brings her back to the old rundown motel he’s staying at on the outskirts of town. He kisses her like she’s never been kissed before; no tentativeness or hesitation, all roaming hands and tongue and teeth – but Laurel’s surprised to find that she likes it that way.

Just as they fall down onto the bed together, however, she swallows and pulls back to look at him.

“I’ve never… I’m a-”

“Don’t worry,” he promises. “I’ll be gentle.”

“But my mother, she…” Laurel drifts off. “She always told me it would hurt.”

His eyes flicker with amusement. “Not the way I do it.”

It doesn’t hurt. It feels better than Laurel ever could have imagined, and afterward, Frank draws her against his bare chest and holds her, so tenderly that for a moment she forgets just how dangerous he is.

“I’m leaving town in the morning,” he tells her suddenly.

A lump forms in her throat. “What?”

“I’m headed down south. Pull a few big jobs there and keep on the move.” He notices the distraught look on her face, and pecks her on the forehead. “If I could stay longer, I would.”

“But you could,” she urges. “You could go straight, couldn’t you?”

He chuckles and sits up, running a hand through his beard. “And get a job digging ditches for the next twenty years? That kinda life’s not for me.”

A moment passes in silence. Then, all at once, an idea comes to her.

“Take me with you,” she breathes.

He raises a doubtful eyebrow. “You wanna run away with a crook like me you barely know?”

She knows it’s the truth, deep down. She barely knows him at all, and yet somehow she feels like she’s known him forever, like she’s been waiting for him all along, and now that he’s here… She can’t let him go without her.

“I hate it here. Kan, and my parents, and  _everyone_. Please, Frank,” Laurel urges, moving closer to him. “Let me come with you.”

He stands and reaches for his shirt. “Look, I don’t know what kind of ideas you have in your pretty little head about what I do, but it’s not all fun and games. A rich girl like you wouldn’t make it five minutes on the lam.”

“Yes I would!” she cries, indignant. “I’m not afraid.”

Frank stops what he’s doing and looks at her, a frown of contemplation on his face. Then, his eyes soften.

“Fine,” Frank finally tells her. “Pack your bags. We leave before sunup.”

 

–

 

Laurel creeps into her house in the early morning hours, and packs her suitcase with as many clothes as she can fit.

She scampers out the door and back onto the street as fast as she can, where Frank waits, standing beside his car. He helps her toss the suitcase in the backseat, then picks her up, twirls her around, and kisses her deeply.

They peel out of town with the windows down. She lets her hair down and breathes in the crisp summer air – and for the first time in her life, she feels it; that feeling she’s searched for all her life, never really knowing what it was, but always knowing that she needed it.

She feels it. She feels  _free._

 

–

 

They rob a bank in Missouri.

They stop in Jefferson City on their way to Texas, where Frank is supposed to meet up with an old friend to hit a big bank in the northern part of the city. But the friend never shows up, and he’s left fuming, gathering his things and muttering something about how he works better alone anyway.

That is – until she offers to go with him.

“You,” he echoes incredulously. “ _You’re_ going to rob a bank.”

She frowns. “I could help.”

Frank snorts. “You even know how to hold a gun?”

“I could learn,” she asserts, raising her chin. “I-I want to do something. Not just sit in this motel room all day and wait for you to come back.”

A moment passes in silence. She’s almost sure he’s going to laugh at her and leave, but instead, he reaches into a bag underneath the bed, withdraws a pistol, and holds it out to her.

“All right. But do everything I tell you to and follow my lead. I don’t need to get arrested because I decided to bring you along.”

Just like that, he grabs his hat, suit jacket, and makes for the door. Laurel follows, her stomach flipping wildly inside her.

As it turns out, Frank is more charming that she’d ever imagined a bank robber could be.

He doesn’t order anyone to the ground, or shout arbitrary threats or obscenities. He just strolls up to the tellers calmly, grins, pulls out his gun, and lets it do the rest of the work for him.  

Laurel herself doesn’t do much but stand and watch to make sure none of the other customers are planning on trying anything. The pistol feels heavy and awkward in her hands, and there’s a woman in the corner looking at her from where she’s crouched on the ground, like she can’t quite believe a pretty little rich girl like her is holding up a bank. Part of Laurel can’t, either.

They make off with a hundred dollars or so; a success in Frank’s eyes, because no one has much money these days in this economy.

“You did good,” he tells her as they drive out of town, peering down at the bag of money in her lap. “Good thing you didn’t have to use the pistol, though.”

“Why?”

Wordlessly, he takes his eyes off the road, reaches for the pistol, cocks it, and pulls the trigger.

Nothing comes out but a faint metallic click. Laurel gapes at him.

“You gave me an unloaded gun?”

“You think I was gonna trust you with a loaded pistol? There’re a lot of ways I plan on going out, and getting shot by you isn’t one of ‘em.”

The words strike her as a little grim, but she feels more alive than she ever has, looking at the money in her lap and the man by her side.

She’s a bad person. She knows it now for sure. She’s bad, but oh… he makes it feel so good.

 

–

 

They gun down a man in Tulsa.

They’re holding up a grocery store. Frank doesn’t always like banks – “too big and too much hassle for what you get these days,” and while the money isn’t as good, it’s less risky.

But the storeowner is stubborn as a bull. After determining he can’t take down Frank with any degree of success, he lunges at Laurel, grabbing her skirt and yanking her to the ground. She lands with a half-shriek, struggling and pinned down underneath him, until-

A gunshot cuts through the air.

Blood splatters around her, bits of it landing on her cheeks and blouse. Above her, the storeowner sways, and then falls heavily to the side, dead.

Shaking, she props herself up, and that’s when she sees Frank looming over the two of them, holding the smoking gun in hand with a look on his face as blank as she’s ever seen. The eyes that’d seemed perpetually full of mischief and laughter before are empty. Cold.

“Frank,” she breathes. “Y-you… you ki-”

“I know what I did,” he cuts her off. “Forget the money. We’re getting outta here.”

They do just that, fleeing before the police can arrive to a motel a few hours away, where they stop for the night. She’s still trembling, pale and shaken, and he sits her down on the bed, dabbing at the blood on her face with damp rag.

“Have you done that before?” Laurel manages to ask, aware for the first time just how deadly the man kneeling before her is.

He nods, impassive. “Yeah.”

She gulps. “H… how many times?”

“I don’t know.”

“Frank-”

“Trust me, Laurel,” he tells her, gravely but gently. “You don’t wanna know.”

 

–

 

It takes time, but slowly she works the story out of Frank.

He ran with the Mafia back in Philly. Bootlegging, illegal gambling. He was their muscle. He took care of things – people.

Then, his brother got in trouble, mouthed off to the wrong guy and got a contract put out on him. They shot him dead, and that was when Frank embarked on “a change of profession,” as he calls it.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him with a frown, as they lay in bed just as he’s finished the story. “That’s awful.”

He shakes his head. “Don’t be. If that’d never happened, I never would’ve met you – and you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I mean that.”

 

–

 

After the third man they kill – a policeman in Texas – their faces are plastered across almost every newspaper in the country.

It’s the story of the century for reporters: the hardened criminal and the beautiful rich girl, pairing up to rob banks and kill in a glamorous crime spree unlike any ever witnessed before. Expensive cars. Big guns. Gruesome murders.

She kills for the first time in Tennessee, a bank teller in Memphis who tries to play hero and save the day. She’s shaken, afterward, and can’t sleep for a week, but in time… The guilt fades away, and she feels, for the first time, like the bad person she knows she truly is.

And still, she’s never felt so  _alive_.

Back east they meet up with a distant relation of Frank’s – a young man Laurel’s age named Asher Millstone, son of a wealthy judge. He’s rash, thrill-seeking, and manages to convince Frank to bring him and his mousy wife Bonnie along for a while – or rather, whines until Frank has no choice but to acquiesce to shut him up.

Laurel doesn’t like Bonnie. She seems too observant, always eyeing Laurel and Frank with an air of disapproval. There’s something unnerving about her that Laurel can’t quite put her finger on, no matter how hard she tries.

The night after they hit their first bank as a gang, Bonnie corners Laurel just as they’re setting up camp in the woods, while Asher and Frank are off in town buying supplies

“What’re you doing with Frank?” she asks, the slightest of southern drawls in her voice.  

Laurel pokes at the fire and frowns. “Excuse me?”

“He’s not a good man,” the older woman tells her, lips pursed tight. “You know that.”

“Neither is Asher,” she counters. “He held a gun to those tellers today just the same as Frank did.”

“Asher’s a fool. I love him more than anything; if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here now. But he’s a fool. He’s not dangerous.” Bonnie pauses. “ _Frank_  is dangerous.”

“He’s-”

“And you look like a nice girl. You really do. Take my advice, Laurel, and get away from him while you still can. He’ll just end up hurting you.”

With that, Bonnie gets to her feet and starts to walk away, but stops in her tracks when Laurel calls out after her, “I’m not.”

The woman turns, furrowing her brow. “What?”

“A nice girl,” Laurel says. “I’m not. I killed a man, in Tennessee. A bank teller. At first I felt bad, but not really anymore. So I’m not a… nice girl.”

“Well,” Bonnie replies, folding her arms. “Then it looks like you two deserve each other.”

 

–

 

Asher and Frank get shot in Alabama.

The police track them down at a motel on the outskirts of Huntsville, surround them, and open fire. Bullets and shattered pieces of glass fly everywhere, and after frantically gathering up everything they can carry, they scamper over to the door that connects their room to Bonnie and Asher’s.

When they do, they find Asher lying on the ground, his shirt soaked in blood and his head cradled in a weeping Bonnie’s hands.

“Get him up,” Frank orders, reaching for his gun. Bonnie doesn’t answer, and he scowls. “Get him up, dammit!”

“Does he look like he can move?” Bonnie chokes out through her sobs. “ _Help_  me!”

Laurel looks sideways at Frank, and finds him looking back – and she knows, then, exactly what he’s thinking. Lugging a mortally wounded Asher around will only slow them down now; if they’re going to make it out of this alive, they have no choice but to leave without them.

So Frank goes for the door, tightening his grip on her wrist as they dodge the flying bullets, and throws it open, without sparing a glance back at Bonnie or Asher.

“Frank!” Bonnie screeches after them. “Frank!  _Frank_ , you bastard!”

Somehow, they manage to escape in a hail of flying bullets, and lose the police a few miles down the road. It’s only after Laurel looks out the back window of their car and finds no one following them that she relaxes, letting out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

They’re alive. Just barely – but alive.

They drive in silence for half an hour, both gravely aware of what they’ve just done. The air is heavy and thick between them, and Laurel is trembling, shaken by the close call. 

They pull over to set up camp in a woods a ways off the road, and it’s only when Frank steps out of the car that she notices him stumble, and sees the thin sheen of sweat coating his forehead.

Her stomach sinking, she hurries over to him, and peels back his suit jacket.

Her hands come away sticky and covered in blood. And red.

Damningly red.

“Frank,” she breathes. “No, nonono-”

“I’m fine,” he bites out.

She doesn’t believe him for a second, and urges him to lie down, frantically gathering up the materials for a fire and searching through what little possessions that’d been able to snatch up to find a roll of bandages. The bullet looks to have passed through him, but it’d struck him in the side, and she’s never seen so much blood before in her life. So much that she has no idea how he could even  _hope_  to survive this.

This is the end. The realization hits her like a kick in the stomach. She’d known it had been coming all along. She should’ve been ready, ready to lose him from the moment they’d started – oh God, she should’ve  _known_  it would end in blood like this.

“You’re not  _fine_ ,” Laurel half-sobs, her hands shaking as she wraps the bandage around his lower abdomen. “Oh God, Frank, no-”

“Hey,” he catches her hand, stilling it at once and giving her a weak little grin. “Don’t cry. I-”

He cringes, clamping his jaw shut to keep from moaning in pain. Laurel looks at her hands, which by now are positively soaked with blood, and back down at him, and she heaves another sob, moving closer to lay his head in her lap.

“I love you,” she chokes out in a pathetic burst. “I lo-”

“No.” He scowls, his eyes darkening. “Don’t you dare say that just ‘cause you think I’m dying. It’s gonna take a hell of a lot more than a ball of lead to kill me.”

“But I-I can’t lose you, Frank…”

“And you’re not gonna,” he tells her, voice surprisingly steady. “I’ll do right by you, one day. Marry you. I’ll get us a house and everything. We’ll have a couple kids. Get old together. How’s that sound?”

She nods through her tears, and reaches out to caress the side of his face. He takes her hands and holds them tightly, her small, bloody ones almost totally enveloped by his.

“Listen to me. I’m gonna be fine.” Laurel doesn’t answer, just lowers her eyes, and so he raises his voice. “Say it. I’m gonna be fine. I promise. And I may be a criminal, but I don’t break my word.”

It takes her a moment to compose herself, and once she has, all Laurel can manage is a faint whisper, “All right. You… you’re gonna be fine.”

But the words taste like a lie on her tongue. She’s terrified that they just might be.

 

–

 

Somehow, Frank makes it through the night.

The next day, she drives them up to Philadelphia, where he directs her to the home of a woman named Annalise Keating. “An old friend,” he calls her. “Someone we can trust.”

Laurel doesn’t know their history, but it must be lengthy, because the woman takes them in without a single question and brings a doctor to him, swearing the man to secrecy. They stay with her for a week while he recovers, and leave early in the morning to keep out of sight, thanking her earnestly.

They’re back on the road, again, but after almost losing Frank… It’s not the same as it used to be. The world is colored differently, the danger around every corner more evident to Laurel. There’s an air of fatalism about her now that wasn’t there before.

“I can’t lose you,” she tells Frank one night as she crawls into bed next to him, kneeling above the blankets and looking at him gravely.

He frowns and sits up. “You know we-”

“And it’s not that I don’t want to,” Laurel continues. “But I  _can’t_. A-and if they take us alive, they’ll send me to jail, and you to death row… and that can’t happen.”

She pauses, and he looks at her expectantly, silently bidding her to continue. Sensing that, Laurel takes a deep breath.

“So if we go down…”

Frank clenches his jaw. “No-”

“But if we  _do_ , we go down together. Promise me.”

“No way in hell-”

“ _Promise_  me.”

“Listen to me,” he growls, tugging her close. “You have any idea how much I love you? I’d sooner kill myself than see anyone lay a finger on you.” He lowers his voice all at once, his demeanor softening. “So I can’t promise you that. I won’t.”

“But-”

“Now come on,” Frank urges, patting the blankets beside him. “Don’t think about that anymore. No one’s dying tonight.”

 

–

 

He’ll tell her that it won’t, but Laurel knows that’s how the story will end. They’ll go down together.

They have to, one day. They’re always one step ahead of the police now, but they can’t be forever. One day, they’ll slip up. One day, this will all be over.

But one day isn’t today.

Today, it’s another bank. Another motel. Today, it’s another day with him – and it’s hard, and far from perfect, but she’s happy; happier than she ever was before, and happier than she’ll ever be again. She knows that, now. Knows it as sure as she knows she’s breathing.

The sun is setting as they drive out of Dallas, painting the sky with gold and red stripes like a brilliant canvas. Frank slings his arm around her shoulders and pulls her close. She beams, resting her head on his shoulder and settling in at his side, like a puzzle piece to its perfect fit.

Laurel knows how the story will end, knows they probably only have so many sunsets left before the inevitable happens. This could be their last, this very night.  

And if this could be their last, well… then she’s bound and determined to enjoy it.


End file.
